


Circuits and Wires

by Nhitori



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5592412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nhitori/pseuds/Nhitori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I know there's something wrong within my faulty brain</i><br/>I lack the proper behavior<br/>My temper-addled tongue can't seem to force it out<br/>The words that linger inside me </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Isa Souma is stuck in an abandoned facility with two malfunctioning androids and an old labor bot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circuits and Wires

“This is… horrfying.”

“Awful, really.”

“Oh, the humanity…”

Three people spoke blankly as they stood in the middle of a mostly empty room with concrete floors and concrete walls, with insulation pushing at the exposed rafters like water at the walls of a poorly constructed submarine at pressures that it could hardly withstand. The room was a basement, but it had been mostly cleared out of any of the usual things that one would find in a basement. There were no old knicknacks, nor were there any tools, any bins of items…

The room was entirely empty, devoid of nails sticking out of the walls in a few places, and the object that these three were examining. It honestly just looked like a mess. An inexplicable jumble of metal with a sack on the end of it… at least, that was how it appeared at first glance, but… “Do you think that she’s still alive?”

“Nageki?” One of the other two questioned, turning his head to look at the boy whose name was apparently Nageki, “What do you mean, still alive? If this was a prototype, they’ve all been completely deactivated for years… Not… not useful anymore.”

“Hitori, look a little closer-”

“My eyes aren’t as good as yours. Unnecessary complexity,” He reminded him.

“Oh yeah, that’s right. I’ll see if I can find a light switch, then you’ll understand what I’m saying…” He nodded before wandering off.

“Isa? Do you know what he was talking about?” Hitori asked, now turning his head to their one remaining companion who hadn’t made any further comment than a nearly-sarcastic ‘oh the humanity’ earlier in their investigation.

“Yes, but… I do think it would be better if you just saw for yourself,” Isa sighed, then an old and weary lightbulb flickered on above their heads, crackling as the filament burned up a few particles of dust, but illuminated the room enough for Hitori to see. Unlike the other two, his expectations had never included much in the way of observation, so his vision was only as good as that of a human. Now that the mess of metal was lit up, Hitori was able to recognize further than just having a semi-humanoid shape, and only took a step backwards in silence as Isa commented on it, “It has a human brain, under that sack...” He crouched down closer to read something engraved on the metal, “Labor-9… No wonder they left it down here by itself.”

“Isa,” Nageki said softly as he returned to the scene, brushing past Hitori who still seemed to be in shock, “You can answer my question, can’t you? How well-preserved is her brain? Can we wake her up?”

“Very well-preserved. The engineering is awful… sixth grade level, perhaps, but no better than I could do… The brain is perfectly intact. I believe that this is exactly what I would do, should I ever need to transfer a human brain to a robotic form… though I would hope that I’d have a better form available to put it into,” He shrugged, standing back up and turning to look at Hitori, “Oh, snap out of it. She’s only sleeping…”

“Don’t be rude, Isa,” Nageki grumbled, hitting his compatriot lightly on the arm before grabbing Hitori’s shoulder lightly, “Hitori’s seen a lot of dead robots.”

“...In any case, we should go back upstairs,” Isa shrugged, brushing off Nageki’s comment and turning to go back in the direction from whence they’d come.

“What, and just leave her down here?” Nageki questioned, letting go of Hitori’s shoulder now to go and stop Isa from leaving them here, “You said the brain’s preserved well enough. I’m sure we could find a more functional body, and…”

“I don’t feel like going through the effort. If Nishikikouji was still here, it would be a different matter. I could force all of the engineering work onto him, but as it stands, it would just be too difficult for me to bother.”

“So you’re just going to leave her down here…? All alone?” Hitori questioned, then ran over and picked up the pieces of metal as best as he could, making sure to support the sack which supposedly held… a human brain, “We just can’t do that… even if you aren’t going to wake her up, we have to at least take her back upstairs with us…”

“Bleeding heart…” Isa muttered, sounding annoyed.

“Isa, I’m not sure you can legally call him a bleeding heart,” Nageki gave him a scrutinous look, “Given the nature of all of our bodies, and the distinct lack of both blood and hearts.”

“It’s a figure of speech. Which you should know, bookworm,” Isa glared as Nageki, who just shrugged, then turned to Hitori, “Come on! Leave her there and let’s go.”

“Isa, she has a human brain! That means that she’s technically a human, right? So if we leave her here, then we would absolutely be breaking the first law of robotics…” Hitori protested.

“Don’t make me laugh, you’ve never cared about those laws before-”

“Isa!” Nageki snapped, then walked over Hitori to help him carry Labor-9, “Ignore him, Hitori. He was never even put in turing tests, he doesn’t know what he’s saying…”

“I never _needed_ to be put in turing tests, because I was Ryuuji Kawara’s most successful project,” He shot back, “And as advanced as I am, I shouldn’t need to be stuck in here with a couple of scrap heaps from the reject pile…”

“We know. You don’t have to boast about it…” Hitori hissed through his teeth as he and Nageki started carrying the heap of metal towards the stairs, and Isa met his eyes only to see that they’d turned completely dark… ugh. That was unnerving. One of the issues he knew Hitori to have was faulty facial expressions, which overcompensated the ‘hard eye’ process, but that didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t exactly comfortable to look at.

It also meant that Isa had managed to piss him off a particularly large amount; he’d already been pushing his metaphorical buttons by talking about the laws of robotics, but something about his own status as the only project to be branded a success really seemed to grind Hitori’s gears. So he hesitated, then sighed, “I wasn’t boasting. Only stating facts. I apologize.”

Hitori wasn’t pleased with the fact that Isa was considered a success, but he also couldn’t deny that he was correct. The only bot that Ryuuji and Nishikikouji had managed to create that could handle a personality without various other malfunctions. He and Nageki both fell into that latter category of various other malfunctions. They were among a group of bots that had scored incredibly high on turing tests to a point of seeming more real than ones without personalities who were told what to say by humans… but it was complex circuitry that didn’t lend itself very well to troubleshooting.

Hitori had the small issue with the facial feature overcompensation, though Nishikikouji probably could have fixed that if he was still around. The real issue he encountered was a complete and utter inability to maintain a connection with his internal battery. He could hold a charge just fine, but would often power off at random times when the connection became faulty.

Nageki, meanwhile, had particularly weak synthetic-organic matter, if that was it could be called. Anyone from a later grouping had been built with as much fake humanity as possible, including synthetic materials to give them the effect of skin and hair, as an example. However, Nageki’s programming seemed to have an issue with the preservation of this matter, so he often needed to replace it after being exposed to materials which would make a human ill.

Luckily, Isa knew how to make more of it.. his skill was in biology, almost as if Ryuuji had known when finally creating an unflawed design that he would need to do something like this. It was useful enough that Nageki and Hitori still mildly cared about staying on his good side, at least. Nageki technically could function just fine without any of that stuff, of course, but it was much more comfortable to have it on.

Touch receptors. Those brilliant scientists really did think of everything, didn’t they? Isa was the closest robotics would ever get to creating an artificial human, and Nageki and Hitori were still testaments to the skills of their creators… though, not many who would be put in a position to acknowledge that fact would. It was the superiors after all, who said that…

Well, that was unimportant, anyway. At the moment, they had an old Labor android to restore to functionality… somehow.


End file.
